Why: The data response and issues resolution workshop is being held so that staff, the applicant, intervenors, interested agencies, and the public can discuss technical areas including soil and water resources, cultural resources, alternatives, and biological resources.

What: The 500-megawatt project will be located on 3,277 acres of privately owned land leased in Inyo County next to the Nevada border. The project site is about eight miles southeast of Pahrump, Nevada and about 45 miles west of Las Vegas. Transmission and natural gas pipeline alignments will be located in Nevada, primarily on land managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

The applicant for the project is Hidden Hills Solar Holdings, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of BrightSource Energy, Inc. The applicant will be constructing two separate 250-megawatt solar thermal power plants, each with its own solar field of about 85,000 heliostats and a 750-foot tall solar power tower. The plant will use heliostats, which are elevated mirrors guided by a tracking system mounted on a pylon, to focus the sun's rays on a solar receiver steam generator atop a power tower near the center of the solar field.

The capital cost for the project is estimated to exceed $2.7 billion. The project will create 1,087 jobs at the peak of the 29-month construction period, with another 120 full-time jobs when the project is operational.

If approved by the Energy Commission, construction is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2014 or the first quarter of 2015. Commercial operation of the first solar plant would be in the first quarter of 2015, with the second solar plant operating in the second quarter of 2015.